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Pastors, Preaching, and Persecution

The Individual Conscience: Another Casualty of Obamacare

You Can Fool Everybody But God And Your Conscience. Give A Full Days Work – NARA – 534350 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Martin Luther once famously said, “I cannot and will not recant, because acting against one’s conscience is neither safe nor sound.” His life was on the line for his Christian beliefs, and he reasoned that dying would be better than going against his conscience. He believed that a man lives beyond himself in world in which he must give an account for his soul. Thus, he could not violate his conscience—even if it meant he would die.

Today, our government is demanding the end of conscience for anyone who runs a business in America. It is ironic, isn’t it? We castigate business owners as “Wall Street Fat Cats” who care nothing about people—only money. And yet, when a businessman like David Green tries to run his business on principle and according to deeply held beliefs about what is best for other people, he is threatened with a fine of 1.3 million dollars per day for doing so.

The Obama administration does not care about David Green’s conscience. They care about abortion. And they care about having Roman Catholics and Evangelicals pay for it. Does that sound too cynical, even conspiratorial? It isn’t. It is the truth. The Obama Administration is arguing, first, that businesses are by definition secular and, second, that even if they were religious by nature, the burden posed by the mandate in Obamacare is not substantial. (After all, it isn’t like early abortions are killing real babies—just babies in development. No big deal!). Read it for yourself from the legal brief by the Department of Justice:

Hobby Lobby is a for-profit, secular employer, and a secular entity by definition does not exercise religion. Even if a secular entity could exercise religion within the meaning of [Religious Freedom Restoration Act] RFRA, the preventive services coverage regulations still do not substantially burden the company’s or its owners’ exercise of religion for an independent reason: any burden caused by the regulations is simply too attenuated to qualify as a substantial burden.[1]

So, who decided that a business owner must become secular to do business in the United States? The Constitution is supposed to protect the free exercise of religion. That is the reason pacifists have been given a pass in military combat—not because the Army is a religious entity. Obviously, it’s not. Individuals have a duty to be bound to their consciences and cannot be asked to violate them for political whims by coercive governments. But that is exactly what has happened to America after Obamacare.

David Green has always run his business in such a way that he has shown a great concern for the people he employs. Hobby Lobby pays its employees 80% above minimum wage. Employees enjoy free time in the evenings and on weekends. And even though the company could make lots of money on Sundays, they close on that day so families can enjoy a day of rest. David Green and family believe in a Sabbath rest, based on conscience. Hobby Lobby has always been a conscientious business.

And now, the Obama Administration is saying, “Your conscience must go.” The individual conscience is yet another casualty of Obamacare in the new America.

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